The Insult

by Rupert Thomson

  It was late evening by the time the train pulled into Central Station. I stepped down on to the platform, my cane in one hand, my suitcase in the other. I could feel the money in my coat pocket, a roll of banknotes tightly bound with an elastic band; my father wouldn’t let me leave until I’d taken it. That should keep you going for a month or so. Until your disability allowance comes through. I took a deep breath and then hesitated, uncertain which way to turn.

  A dense fog had descended. The voices of travellers beneath the vaulted, wrought-iron roof had a reverential sound, the murmur of worshippers in churches, people speaking to people who are dead. My skin grew thin; a panic whirled inside my head. I suddenly had thoughts I’d never had before. Our century has taken all the things we relied on. Our century has stripped us naked. Religion’s gone, the family, too. We’re alone, among distractions, then it’s over.

  I wasn’t sure how long I stood there for.

  At last I forced myself to walk. My legs were made of bamboo, with string in the middle instead of muscle. The hand that held the suitcase didn’t feel like mine. I gave my ticket to the man who asked for it and set out across the station concourse. The crowds parted before me. I passed along the tiled tunnel that led to the taxi-rank. A piece of paper fluttered over my face. I bent down, picked it up. There was handwriting on it. It was some kind of note, but the paper was torn; only a fragment was left. Five words were visible and my heart leapt because I knew they were intended specifically for me:

  You were brilliant!

  Well done!

  The Hotel Kosminsky stood on the edge of the red-light district, behind the train station. I remembered it from before – the outside of it, at least. All flaky-grey, it had the look of cold roast pork. The windows were dusty, smoke-stained, often cracked. Above the entrance, a torn black canopy fluttered in the wind that always seemed to be tormenting that particular street-corner. Two brothers owned the place. I’d seen them once, climbing out of a foreign car. They had close-cropped hair and wore identical suits of grey silk. People said they had certain interests in the area – apart from the hotel, that is. I was banking on this reputation; the Kosminsky was dubious, and nobody I knew would think of looking for me there.

  I found a bell on the reception desk and bounced my hand on it. A man appeared, his head and shoulders wrapped in cigarette smoke, his eyes filmy, blinder than mine. He looked me over.

  ‘You’re not planning on dying here, are you?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not planning on that.’

  ‘We had someone die on us last week.’ He pulled on his cigarette and crushed it out in a tin-foil ashtray. ‘Seems people only check in here to fucking die.’ He opened a register, licked one finger. Turned the page. ‘We’ve got a single on the eighth floor. How long do you want it for?’

  ‘You got a monthly rate?’

  ‘Two-fifty.’

  I paid the money in advance.

  When he asked for details, I gave him the name of a boy who’d been in my class at school and the address of a girl I’d been in love with when I was twenty-one.

  ‘The lift’s on your left, Mr Polyak.’

  The lift had wood-veneer walls and a carpet that was brown and pale-orange with a kind of leaf design in it. There was a narrow glass panel in the door so you could see each floor as you passed it, but only for about two seconds. The bell sounded and the door slid open. My floor. I stepped out. There was a strong smell of very old fried chicken. It took me a while to find my room. There didn’t seem to be any sequence to the numbers; they were arranged in the strangest manner, almost randomly.

  The room was long and narrow, with a bathroom just inside the door, on the right. Beyond the bathroom door was a miniature fridge, a wooden table and a plastic chair that balanced precariously on slender metal legs. On the table, predictably, an ashtray, a bible and a telephone. A full-length mirror was bolted to the wall above the fridge. Along the left-hand side of the room there was a wardrobe and a single bed. A cheap oil painting hung above the headboard. Those oil paintings. Sometimes it’s a gypsy, sometimes it’s a kitten. This time it was a pierrot, a pathetic drooping creature, with one glass tear gleaming on his cheek. Between the bed and the table was a window. I pushed it open, leaned my elbows on the sill. I could hear the bells of a distant church, three notes endlessly repeating. The old city lay to the east. A glow arched over it, pale as the light that surrounds a galaxy. Below me I could see the humped back of the station roof, charcoal-grey and ribbed, a whale half-submerged. To my left, an abandoned warehouse, dark windows in a face of crumbling brick, and beyond it, concealed by the steeply slanting tiles, the river, thick as broth and garnished with weeds.

  I turned back into the room. I picked up the telephone and listened: a dialling tone. I replaced the receiver, sat down on the bed. The air smelled of other people. The image of Smulders’ washing passed before me; I wasn’t sure whether it was the staleness of the room or the proximity of the railway station. I lit a cigarette, smoked half of it.

  After a while I got to my feet. I reached up to the centre light, unscrewed the bulb and put it in the drawer of the table. I found the piece of paper that had blown past my face in the station passageway and tucked it into the bracket that held one corner of the mirror to the wall. Then I took my shoes off, stretched out face-down on the bed. It was second nature to me now not to put weight on the back of my head, but sometimes, when I was lying in that position, I felt victimised, powerless. I thought of the police, and what they do with people they’re arresting. I thought of soldiers, in a war.

  A siren curled past the corner of the building eight floors below. It was a sound that seemed moulded, bent; somehow it reminded me of blown glass. But the sound died down and when it had gone, I heard church bells again, those three descending notes, repeating, endlessly repeating …

  At one in the morning I unpacked the sandwiches my mother had prepared for me. As I ate I wondered whether Visser had heard about my disappearance yet. In a way, I hoped he had. I’d like to have seen his face. Was it part of a process described in those neurology textbooks of his? Or had I outwitted him once more? I thought back to our last conversation. He’d called me at my parents’ house in the middle of the week.

  ‘How are you, Martin?’

  I remembered how my eyelids had burned. I couldn’t have been asleep for more than an hour.

  ‘Fine, Doctor. How are you?’

  ‘You sound tired.’

  ‘I was asleep. You woke me.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful morning. You should get up.’

  He’d be sitting in his swivel chair, the black leather creaking. I could imagine the sunlight enhancing the chestnut tints in his moustache. I saw the man in all his vanity.

  ‘Can I help you with anything, Doctor?’

  ‘No, no. I was just ringing to find out how you are.’

  ‘I’m fine. Really.’ I had to be careful not to overstate it, though. ‘I’m getting about a bit. You know, with my stick.’

  ‘Good, good. Just because you’re not at the clinic any more, it doesn’t mean we’re not concerned about you.’

  ‘No –’

  ‘I must say, I enjoyed our afternoon together, the walk and so on.’ He paused. ‘I hope you don’t think I was too hard on you.’

  ‘No. Not at all.’

  ‘Perhaps we could do it again some time. It’s important that we don’t lose touch.’

  I was having trouble sustaining the conversation. I wasn’t sure what he wanted to hear.

  Suddenly he was laughing. ‘You’re an extraordinary case, you see. Unique, in fact. We’ve never had anyone quite like you, Martin. As I’m sure you realise.’

  Was I supposed to feel flattered?

  ‘Well,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll ring you again soon. In a week or two.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor. And thanks for calling.’

  ‘Goodbye, Martin.’

  A conversation that now seemed harmless, anodyne (certain
ly there was no suggestion that he suspected me of planning anything). A conversation that was supposed to take its place in a series of similar conversations. A conversation that would be instantly forgettable, in fact, were it not for my own preoccupations. On the afternoon he’d referred to, I’d had the feeling that there was something he wasn’t telling me. I had the same feeling now, in the hotel. I lingered on certain of his words: Important. Extraordinary. Unique. I stared at the remains of my sandwich on its sheet of greaseproof paper. I thought of the night I’d found myself, as chance would have it, looking down into his office. Visser at three in the morning, with a file marked HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL. X-rays of my skull pinned to the wall. What was it that was confidential? Why was I such a persistent source of fascination to him? It was as though, behind Bruno Visser, fifteen or twenty people were standing one behind the other. If I took a step sideways, I would see them right away. But I didn’t know how to take that step. That was how it was with Visser. I was constantly probing his faÇade for an ulterior motive, some hidden design. I imagined what his reaction would be, if he knew. ‘Martin,’ he would say, and he’d be laughing, ‘don’t be so suspicious!’

  I slept later than usual. By the time I’d washed and dressed, it was after rush-hour. I walked out into the corridor. The same smell of old chicken rose into my nostrils. I noticed the carpet. It was dark-pink and cream, a kind of meat-and-fat pattern I didn’t think I’d ever seen before. Opposite the lift I discovered a lounge area: a sofa and two armchairs, all upholstered in black vinyl, and a tall ashtray that looked like part of a juggler’s act – a silver dish balancing on a silver pole. I pressed the call button outside the lift, but there was no response; I decided to take the stairs instead. When I crossed the lobby, there was a different person on reception – younger, with slicked-back hair and a guitarist’s fingernails. He was reading a comic-book. I asked him where the nearest restaurant or café was. He gave me directions without raising his eyes from the page.

  I turned left out of the hotel. The traffic had thinned out, even on the main road. The night was cool and windless. And suddenly, as I stood on the pavement, I was back in the car-park and it was happening again. I felt a wide space open up behind me. Someone was there, someone I couldn’t identify. The assailant? I started to walk away, but I stumbled, tripped. Someone was standing over me. The same someone? How was I to know? Are you all right? I couldn’t answer for a moment. I was lying on the ground, that dark curve arching over me – it had to be the wheel of a parked car – and I could see the tomatoes I’d just bought, three of them, anyway, motionless and red and shiny. There was still somebody standing over me. They pressed something into my hand. Your cane. You dropped your cane. The fourth tomato where was it? And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it rolling silently away from me. Do you need any help? There was a look of concern on the person’s face that mirrored that of people in the clinic. I sat up. Smiled. Dusted my left sleeve, even though it didn’t need it. You have to do normal things or they don’t go away. You have to reassure them. Or they just stand there staring at you, as if you’re a car-crash, or pornography.

  Back in my room I filled a glass with cold water from the tap. I sat on the edge of my bed and sipped the water. I could explain everything. I carried the memory of the shooting inside me; the shock of it still travelled in my blood. And if that memory was affecting me now, it was probably because I was alone for the first time, truly alone. My nervousness was only to be expected; it was rational, in fact, perfectly understandable and would ease with time. I thought of calling Visser. I even reached for the phone. But then his words came back to me and that soapstone voice of his was with me in the room. So long as you’re prepared to fail. There was nothing he could tell me now. Our realities no longer overlapped. And besides, I didn’t want him knowing where I was. I stood up. I placed the plastic chair in front of the mirror and then I sat on it, my feet propped on the fridge door. I sat there for more than an hour. I calmed myself by staring at my face.

  The next day I took the lift to the ground floor as soon as darkness fell. The same youth was in reception, reading the same comic-book.

  ‘I need an ironmonger’s,’ I said.

  This time he looked up, his eyes dazed by the KA-THUNK and POW of mighty fists. ‘Did you find the restaurant OK, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  I told him to call me Martin. His name was Victor.

  ‘Ironmonger’s,’ he said, half to himself. He thought there was one nearby, just west of the hotel.

  I walked out on to the street and stood for a moment under the torn black canopy, then set off along the pavement. This time there was no panic, no hesitation. In fifteen minutes I was there, the door jangling as I entered. Tall plastic flip-top bins hung from the ceiling, twisting slowly on their ropes.

  I couldn’t see the shopkeeper to begin with. Then he rose up from behind a cash-register that somebody had lined with Astroturf.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  I looked up at the slowly twisting bins. ‘There been some kind of lynching here?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Not everybody has a sense of humour. ‘I need a can of black paint.’

  ‘Black paint, eh? What’s it for?’

  His eyes fidgeted behind a pair of spectacles. They could’ve been reptiles, the way they were kept behind glass like that. They could’ve been poisonous. Also, somehow, there seemed to be more than two of them.

  ‘If you don’t tell me what it’s for,’ he said, ‘I won’t know what kind of paint to recommend.’

  ‘It’s for glass.’

  ‘Glass?’ In his surprise, he gave the word more push. His breath had a bitter smell. Like saucepans.

  ‘I want to paint my windows,’ I said.

  The shopkeeper gripped his chin with his forefinger and tucked his thumb underneath. ‘For a darkroom, is it? No, it’s obvious you’re not a photographer –’

  I interrupted him. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘My name? Sprankel. Walter Sprankel. Why?’ He was stammering suddenly, which pleased me.

  I leaned on the counter. Something cracked beneath my elbow, but I pretended not to notice. ‘Sprankel,’ I said, ‘are you going to sell me any paint or not?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, of course.’ He reached behind him and a can appeared in his hand.

  ‘That wasn’t so difficult, was it?’

  ‘No.’ He was still holding the can. ‘It’s oil-based. Ideal for metal, plastic – and for glass.’ He wrapped it up. ‘Is there something else I can do for you?’

  ‘I’d better have a paintbrush.’

  ‘Certainly. Anything else?’

  ‘A strip of felt one metre long. Preferably black, though brown would do. And some nails. Let’s say two dozen.’ I lifted a warning finger. ‘And no guessing what they’re for, Sprankel. All right?’

  Just before dawn I had the dream again, only this time it wasn’t me who was running down the sunlit street, it was Smulders. I looked on with a kind of disbelief. Smulders running – what a sight! Each stride he took, his body reverberated. And before the reverberation had time to die down, he took another stride. The reverberations merged, one into the next, a kind of crosshatching of the flesh. Some sections moved quite independently of others; or sometimes they collided, rebounded, collided once again. His armpit hair streamed horizontally behind him. Then bits started flying off. Sausage fingers, sausage toes. An earlobe the size of a dried apricot. One meaty arm, a tree-trunk of an ankle. I almost felt sorry for the road. I watched his tiny penis flee the threat posed by his overhanging belly. His scrotum, sheepish, followed it. Soon he was gone. Nothing left except a kind of after-image: fat air, thin air – one moving through the other. Essence of Smulders. I woke up smiling. It was a comic version of the dream, the dream mocking itself. I lay in bed, wondering if what I was seeing was the beginning of a new phase. Maybe the fear was burning off at last. Maybe the worst was
over.

  I sat up in bed. My smile widened as I saw the result of my night’s work. The window next to me was black. The window in the bathroom, too. Three coats, just to be on the safe side. Strips of felt lined the edges of the windows and the bottom of the door. What I was trying to create was absolute, one hundred per cent darkness. In a city this wasn’t easy. It surprised me how much light there was, and light seemed to breed light. It was like a headline I saw in the paper once: WOMAN MAKES SELF PREGNANT. I was close now, though; I was really close. The room was dark as a coffin with the lid screwed down. I could see every detail, even the dead insects on the floor, even the dust. When the maid came in to clean, which wasn’t often in a place like the Kosminsky, she’d have to use a torch. I decided to pay her extra for her trouble.

  On the same street as the Kosminsky was an all-night restaurant called Leon’s. You walked in through a rickety glass-and-metal door, parting a curtain that was lined with vinyl to keep out the draughts. Once beyond the curtain you were hit by the smell of sweat and soup and cigarettes. Upstairs, there was a billiard hall. The restaurant lay to your left. It had yellow tiled walls and square Formica tables, and the windows always ran with condensation. On the ceiling, several white fluorescent tubes (I sometimes found Leon’s a bit bright, but it was so close to the hotel, so convenient, that I was prepared to sacrifice a small percentage of my vision). You paid the woman at the cash-register and she gave you a receipt. It was self-service. There was a TV in the top corner of the room, its screen angled downwards, like some modern bird of prey. You ate with your eyes fixed on it, one arm curled protectively around your plate. Leon’s clientele? Pretty much as you’d expect. Night-porters, taxi-drivers, hookers with their pimps. Junkies, divorcees. Insomniacs. These people were my people. Daylight? They could take it or leave it; it didn’t do them any favours (in fact, in some cases, it did them a definite disservice). I quickly became a regular at Leon’s. I always took a table by the wall and sat with my back to it (I imagined the Kosminsky brothers did the same – though for different reasons). I was in the restaurant every night, at midnight, to eat my lunch. Usually I ordered fried steak with onion rings (Leon cooked it just the way I liked it: juices seeping out of the meat, the onions slightly blackened). Or sometimes I had boiled beef.